Current Expo
Info and background stories of our current exhibition
OSCAM x Top Notch x Magamba Network present: BOUT IT #2
Hip hop is more than music: it is both a form of personal expression and shared culture. Hip-hop is global and local, from the avenues in Harare and Bulawayo to the Bijlmer in Amsterdam. The culture is extremely popular on a world scale and throughout all socio-economic backgrounds but is often misunderstood within the world of art and culture. Placing hip-hop in a museum creates a space for interesting cross-fertilization between two seemingly different worlds of art. The global becomes local, the personal becomes cultural, and the audible becomes visual.
The original Bout it was developed in 2018 by Marian Duff with guest curator Kees de Koning, founder of hip-hop label Top Notch as an ode to hip-hop culture. In this second edition of the successful exhibition, Marian Duff and Souf Kinani (creative content manager at Top Notch) once again put musical entrepreneurs from Southeast in the spotlight, but they also look across the border to musicians from the Zimbabwean Magamba Network.
Marques Malacia of Studio Wesseling portrays the Dutch artists at the places in which their music and lyrics are drenched. At the same time, KB Mpofu portrays their Zimbabwean colleagues from the Magamba Network in Harare. The exhibition is an ode to these “journalists” of the streets, flats, squares and fields of the Bijlmer and Harare, who use their music to gather sociocultural understanding and raise social issues.
Hip hop has common ground with the way visual artists perceive and create. Design forms an integral element of hip-hop culture, with creators appropriating commercial expressions from the Do-It-Yourself attitude that is characteristic of hip-hop. This exhibition forms a bridge between hip-hop culture and classic museum culture. We highlight different sides of the international and Amsterdam-style hip-hop scene and offer artists the opportunity to manifest themselves on a fundamentally different stage.
Colophon
BOUT IT #2 is a joint exhibition by OSCAM, Magamba Network, and TopNotch.
Curators: Marian Duff & Souf Kinani
Exhibition designers: Floor Wesseling & Marques Malacia
Photographers: Studio Wesseling & KB Mpofu
Production: Samra Asmellash
Supported by: Gemeente Amsterdam, Prince Claus Fund, VandenEnde Foundation, AFK, and VSB Fonds
Participating artists NL: Chivv, Yung Nnelg, Giefa Sparkle, Jordymone9, and Sor
Participating artists ZWE: Asap, Thug, Sibo FlySoul, Msiz’kay, and Natasha Muz
Special thanks to: Magamba Network, Vera Chisvo, Tongai Makawa, Armand Ong A Swie, and Thijs Ottens
Read all BOUT IT
OSCAM x Kahlil Joseph x Bonnefanten x Patta x HipHopHuis present: BLKNWS
What would the news look like if it was about black culture? Through the pop-up expo ‘BLKNWS’ by Kahlil Joseph, in collaboration with Bonnefanten, Patta and HipHopHuis we will take a critical look at information provision.
BLKNWS (black news) is an innovative project by Los Angeles based artist and filmmaker Kahlil Joseph. The installation consists of two flat screens placed side by side, mounted on a background in the form of a photo wallpaper. With this Kahlil Joseph realizes a 2 channel “news broadcast” in which the boundaries between art, journalism, entrepreneurship and cultural criticism blur; a critical analysis of how racial issues and storytelling collide with information systems. BLKNWS explores the medium of film as a powerful collective experience that can be manipulated through its essential visual and auditory components. By means of a dynamic montage of film clips from popular culture, archive material and filmed TV news clips, the staggering underdevelopment of the news medium format is exposed. Historical material is displayed alongside simple images from our daily reality. Seen through Kahlil Joseph’s lens, these images are permeated with an unusual perception of our contemporary society, which can be understood as the artist’s ethos, giving them a new life of meaning and reflection. The dichotomy effected by the split-screen technique polarizes the images used, fragmenting the story, and bringing into play both the poetic and political potential of the images.
In his conceptual approach to contemporary journalism and entrepreneurship, Kahlil Joseph sees BLKNWS as a work of art, a think tank, a global network, a broadcasting platform and an ongoing archive. Each edition of BLKNWS has a permanent, online connection to the artist’s studio, allowing for new content to be continuously received in real-time, creating an endlessly growing ‘news broadcast’ unique to each location where the work is displayed.
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Colophon
Curator: Marian Duff, Lee Stuart en Stijn Huijts
Artist: Kahlil Joseph
Production: Charmaine Wartes
Partners: Patta, Bonnefanten & HipHopHuis
Image credtis: Kahlil Joseph & Almichael Fraay
Special thanks: Armand Ong A Swie, Richard Soesannah, Noukhey Forster, Louisanne van Hooff, Shaquille Scheder-Pagin, Ahisha Echteld, Lesly Kitioku & Georbella Fini.
Other Expos
Info and background stories of our exhibitions
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